governor – Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com

I did get a sticker, but I got Indiana’s boring one, not any of these cool stickers.

I always try to vote early, but I don’t recall ever voting on the very first day I was legally able to before. This year, though? I wanted that shit over with, and I drove from work directly to Mishawaka’s county services building, arriving about 20 minutes before the doors closed. The line for early voting was out the door, and it took about an hour to get my vote cast.

For the most part, my votes will not surprise you.

These six fine ladies, along with two male ticket members:

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for President and Vice-President
Jennifer McCormick and Terry Goodlin for Governor and Lieutenant Governor
Valerie McCray for Senate
Lori Camp for US House
Destiny Wells for Indiana Attorney General
Maureen Bauer for State House

(They’re up there as a gallery, so it’s possible the order of the pictures doesn’t match the order of the names.)

I voted for the Democrat in all of the local races with one exception: I did not vote for Dave Niezgodski for State Senate, because Dave Niezgodski is a sex pest and I don’t vote for sex pests. I thought briefly about voting for his opponent, but without knowing anything about him, I decided to refrain; honestly, this will be a small enough turnout contest that I feel like simply withholding my vote is enough. I don’t need to actively vote for the other side.

I got to vote against the loathsome Derek “I have a penis” Dieter again, which always pleases me, because fuck that guy.

Purely voting strategically, I voted to retain all of the judges up for vote. I don’t really like voting for judges, to be honest; I rarely know who any of them are and they don’t campaign, and for some reason the Indiana bar’s survey isn’t out yet despite their website promising it’ll be ready by September 30th. I voted to retain because all of them were named by Mitch Daniels or Eric Holcomb, and if they were drummed out of office Mike Braun will likely be picking their replacements, and Mike Braun is a fucking lunatic. Whoever he picks will not be an improvement, so absent any information of use for any of them, retention it is.

The only thing left is the school board, and … our school board candidates are not exactly covering themselves in glory this go-round. My specific candidate for my district isn’t up this year, so I’m just voting at-large, and … ick.

I ended up voting for Jeannette McCullough and George Jones. I know both of them and I am not especially fond of one of them– in fact, I have suggested voting against one of them in the past– but the other choices are worse. In particular, if you’re local enough that this matters to you, I specifically do not endorse Gabrel Kempf and I really really really do not endorse Marcus Ellison. Please do not vote for Marcus Ellison. I have known him for a very long time and I do not want him on the school board.

Getting from work to the early voting center I used involved about ten miles of driving on a road that was sporting a surprising number of political signs. They’re really not all that common yet, although I’m sure that will change, probably by this weekend. And after a while something struck me about all those signs: first, that there were quite a lot of Harris-Walz signs, more than I really expected, and that most of the lawns with Harris-Walz signs also had other signs for local or state offices.

The interesting thing was the Republican signs. For the most part– and I may take this route again on my way home on Thursday to take a closer look and maybe do some counting– it seemed like lawns that had Trump signs only had Trump signs, and even more curiously, lawns with signs for any other Republican candidate often did not have Trump signs. There would either be a Trump sign by itself or a dozen local and state candidates and no Trump sign.

At the moment, I’m presenting this only as an interesting anecdote and I am not drawing any conclusions. I just want it noted for the record. Feel free to speculate on your own, if you like.

This primary kind of snuck up on me. I will grant that my particular style of media and news consumption renders me functionally immune to political ads, but other than a handful of prominent signs for local races near work I haven’t seen a Goddamned thing out there. That said, there’s a race or two worth talking about, and a couple of candidates I’m genuinely enthused about, so here we go:

Joseph R. Biden Jr. for President. This will surprise no one, of course, and Biden is running unopposed in Indiana, so it’s not like there’s even another candidate I can vote for. That said, at least in terms of his impact directly on my personal life, Biden has been the best president of my lifetime and it’s not close. I am both happy and proud to vote for him again.

Valerie McCray for US Senate. There is actually a primary race for Senate this year; both candidates passed my initial smell test, and passed my secondary test of “do you have a website that actually contains useful information about you, and makes me feel like I want you as my Senator?”. Dr. McCray’s is here and her opponent, Marc Carmichael, has his website here. While Carmichael doesn’t seem like an unacceptable choice, my rule is that when presented with two acceptable candidates I vote against the white guy. Right now I’ll be fine voting for him if he makes it through the primary, which, given that this is Indiana, I suspect he will.

Jennifer G. McCormick for Governor. Dr. McCormick was formerly Indiana’s Secretary of Education after Glenda Ritz flamed out, and I swear to God she was a Republican when she was appointed, and I spent more time than one might expect while following her on Twitter wondering how the hell a Republican appointee was getting away with saying the very liberal Democrat-ish things she kept saying. Well, if she was a Republican then, she’s a Democrat now, and I was really happy to hear that she’d decided to run for Governor. She’s running unopposed, which also surprises me, so it’s not like I had a second choice, but I can’t imagine who in this state I might have chosen over her. Sadly, she’ll likely get smoked by whatever rape-enabling troglodyte the Republican primary shits out. But we can hope!

I voted for Lori A. Camp for my House representative; I didn’t have another choice, and I’m going to stop short of calling it an endorsement. Honestly I hadn’t heard of her before going in and the sum total of my research was to make sure that I didn’t have to do any research. I glanced at her website; it’s fine, I suppose. I still want Pat Hackett.

Tim Swager for District 10 State Senator. This is inside-baseball as hell; why am I mentioning it here? Because the incumbent, David Niezgodski, is embroiled in a sexual harassment controversy, and everything I’ve seen about it makes me feel like he’s probably a slimy piece of shit. I am, I admit, a teensy bit leery of Swager as well, who has been spending a lot of money on sending mailers so that everyone knows that Niezgodski is a staffer-harassing asshole who maybe voted against abortion access once or twice– I’m not convinced of this– but said mailers are awfully thin on why Swager himself would be a better choice. His website is also rather thin but contains no obvious red flags, so, sure, you can be State Senator over the creepy married dude who broke into his staffer’s house.

I strongly suspect I’m going to go 0/5 here, if not in the primary than in the actual election, although Niezgodski might be weaker than I think; who knows. But I don’t miss elections. So here we are.